Experiment 1
To get familiarized with the basics of network configuration
files and networking commands in Linux
a. View the configuration, including addresses of your computers
network interfaces.
• Two basic commands are provided by most Unix systems for network configuration and
administration, and can be used to discover some details of a network: netstat and ifconfig.
• netstat
• netstat command displays various network related information such as network connections,
routing tables, interface statistics, masquerade connections, multicast memberships etc.
• netstat -a : To show both listening and non-listening sockets.
• netstat -at : To list all tcp ports
• netstat -au : To list all udp ports
• netstat -l : To list only the listening ports.
• netstat -lt : To list only the listening tcp ports
• netstat -lu : To list only the listening udp ports
• netstat -lx : To list only the listening UNIX ports
• netstat -s : To list the statistics for all ports
• netstat -st : To list the statistics for TCP ports.
• netstat -su : List the statistics for UDP ports
• netstat -pt : To display the PID and program names
• netstat -c : To print the netstat information continuously
• netstat -r : To get the kernel routing information
• netstat -ap | grep ssh : To get the port on which a program is running.
• netstat -i : To get the list of network interfaces
• netstat -ie : To display extended information on the interfaces
• ifconfig
• used to assign the IP address and netmask to an interface or to enable
or disable a given interface
• ifconfig –a: used to display all the interfaces available, even if they are
down
• ifconfig –s : Display a short list, instead of details.
• ifconfig interface up : used to activate the driver for the given
interface
• ifconfig interface down: used to deactivate the driver for the given
interface
• ifconfig –help : Display help related to ifconfig command
• ifconfig –v : log more details about execution
Network configuration files
• /etc/hosts: The /etc/hosts always contains the localhost IP address,
127.0.0.1, which is used for interprocess communication.
• /etc/resolv.conf: The /etc/resolv.conf configures access to a DNS
server.
• /etc/nsswitch.conf: The /etc/nsswitch.conf defines the order in which
to contact different name services.
• Eg: gedit /etc/hosts
Find the hardware/MAC address of another
computer in the network using ARP
• ARP stands for Address Resolution Protocol. The primary function of
this protocol is to resolve the IP address of a system to its mac address
• arp –a : checking arp for all machines
• arp –v : To find out detailed information about the device and its
entries
• arp –n: to display the above output in numeric form
Additional commands
• tcpdump : used to capture or filter TCP/IP packets that are received or
transferred over a network on a specific interface
• sudo tcpdump : To capture the packets of current network interface
• sudo tcpdump -D: To display all available interfaces
• nslookup : a useful command for getting information from the DNS
server.
• Eg: nslookup google.com
